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Assasssin’s Creed IV released itself a significant DLC add-on called Freedom Cry, back in November. Naturally the PC version suffered a last-minute (almost literally this time) delay, but it did eventually emerge at £8/£10. Here’s a strange thing. Later this month the slave-themed separate storyline is getting re-released, this time as a standalone purchase. It’s a chance to say the best word in gaming! EXPANDALONE! Ooh, that felt good.

Deviating from the main plot of AssCreed IV’s piratic adventuring, Freedom Cry follows a chap called Adewale, a man born into slavery who went from pirating to assassinninning, shipwrecked in 18th century Haiti. Which was a place of some horrendous slavery.

“The more he fights for freedom from slavery, however, the more he is drawn into the Maroon slave community, forcing him to face his vicious past.”

Here’s the trailer which for some reason mostly features actual people, and not cartoon game people:

Don’t worry about a last-minute delay for the PC version this time, though! Because they’ve scheduled a delay for the PC version instead. Presumably so Sony can put their hand down their pants and gasp “exclusive”, it’s on PS3 and PS4 on the 19th, then finally bothers to show up on PC on the 25th. Despite already being available to buy to anyone who owns Assassin’s Creed IV. OH THIS INDUSTRY IS SO BLOODY STUPID. I think I might change RPS’s focus to be about flowers, and the florist trade.

25 Comments

That’s because the original Assassin’s Creed was supposed to be a PS3 exclusive but ended up as multiplatform title. Sony platforms get preferential treatment ever since and for the rest of time, apparently.

When it was revealed it was only announced for the PS3, but that was just some marketing BS to drum up interest in the PS3.

“Sony platforms get preferential treatment ever since and for the rest of time, apparently.”

Got something against Sony, because this is hardly true. Microsoft is just as guilty of such shenanigans, and the only reason Nintendo’s not doing it is because no one wants to release games for their consoles.

Am I the only one who thinks Black Flag is a horrible game? I mean, it’s a wonderful multimedia experience, full of great graphics and sounds. But the gaming part? The controls are as terrible as ever, the difficulty is ridiculously low (except you have to fight with the controls), the ship bits are okay but repetitive, money is still a non-issue, you have too much of it, and running around from deserted island to deserted island collecting chests that I don’t even have to look for, they’re on the map, is not exactly my idea of great gaming…

It’s not a challenging game, certainly (with the exception of the legendary ships, some of which are quite genuinely hard). But I find it enjoyable all the same. The series has always been more about sightseeing and just parkouring around in pretty, historically grounded, varied and (very importantly) not commonly explored environments, which honestly still doesn’t feel old even though I’ve poured hundreds of hours into it by now. Most of the gameplay is really just an excuse to run around some more.

Yes, the battles with the legendary ships felt like the one enjoyable moment in an otherwise very forgettable game for me. They reminded me a lot of boss fights in side scrolling shooters, especially the twin ships battle where you kill one and the other “enrages.”

It made me wonder if you could take the naval battle mechanics and turn it in to an R-Type with boats game. Of course it’d be ridiculous, but it might just be ridiculous fun.

Am I the only one who found a few of the tailing missions to be disproportionately difficult compared to the rest of the game? That Charles-Towne foot chase was my worst moment. I resorted to pulling an Indiana Jones and just shot the guy in the back before the chase even started. There were one or two other tailing missions where I felt like I’d cheated the scenario by simply cutting to the chase, so to speak.

And I agree that, despite not being a challenging game overall, it was an immensely enjoyable experience. And I’m not ashamed to admit that the ending hit me like a ton of bricks, which is not at all something I expected from this game. However, part of the reason why it took me by surprise is that the quality of the main storyline seemed to only kick into high gear in maybe the last quarter or so. It was all pretty muddled and scattershot up until then. And I’m not even talking about the useless Abstergo stuff. In the end, the Templar/Assassin storyline was the weakest part of the game. But this was the first AC game I’ve played, so I’m not at all invested in the continuity.

After AC3, I was planning on skipping AC4… but I got it for free with my videocard, and overall enjoyed it. I’ve always loved pirates, and the scenery is gorgeous. It is easy, and repetitive as you say but I think that is to be expected from the franchise at this point.

The key to enjoying it, for me, is this: I don’t go out of my way to do any of the side activities, and I don’t spend too much time fretting about getting 100% ratings on missions.

The only challenges I faced were the diving missions(but that is because I am terrified of sharks). and the harpoon side activities, which I didn’t understand at all and failed miserably at.

Darn, those are 2 very sensible, grounded answers… I guess I’m just an angry man, then. Either that, or the fact it’s -15°C here and miserably humid makes it difficult for me to enjoy a scenery of blue skies and yellow beaches… :p

It’s not a horrible game, especially if you are new to gaming experience but personally i felt such a wasted potential here, the moment the pirates charm vanish i’m left such a lifeless experience, beutifully crafted world that all you do within are mini-games, even naval combat turned out ot be just another mini-game. Nothing is ever changing, no single attempt to simulate things.

I think AC4 mainly succeeds on having enough different stuff to do within the game that it somewhat averts the tedium of some of the other games. Neither the assassiny bits nor the ship combat would be super amazing on their own, but together they offer different experiences to cleanse your palette when things start getting a bit monotonic. Board of wading into soldiers and hitting counter every couple of seconds? Go to your boat and sink a ship or two! Board of doing the exact same fucking boarding minigame thing a bajillion times in a row? Go stab a shark! And so on and so forth.

Also, money (and resources) are actually surprisingly scarce in the lategame. You don’t need them to complete the story, but if you want to get anywhere near completion, or, say, just fully upgrade your ship, you’re going to need a ton of money.

The boarding thing did start to drive me crazy after a while… It’s made even worse by the short animation it plays after you choose what to do with captured ship. When you are working towards a big upgrade, you have to capture a lot of ships, so it becomes very tedious.

It’s easier to keep up the cash flow if you play the Kenway’s Fleet minigame. It starts out slow, but after you open up more trade routes it can bring in some serious cash. I was going to ignore it at first because it seemed like just busy work, but then I started to appreciate the extra funding.

Resources on the other hand, yeah that’s a PITA. It’s basically a way to force you into naval combat. It doesn’t make sense that you can’t just buy metal and wood at dockside with cash, but it’s how the game is set up. You can always just sink ships for half the loot, if you want to bypass the boarding sequence, but I usually go through the whole thing so I have to attack fewer ships.

I have finished AssBro yesterday and while I did enjoy it, it just reminds me that AssCreed games are never about difficulty or, for that matter, sensible controls. Frankly, despite owning a proper gamepad, I decided to play it with KB/M – just as terrible, but at least more precise.

Still, I kinda like those games. Jesper Kyd is awesome, Italians speaking Italian are great and running on the roofs of priceless architecture never bores me. To me, the series has more value than most AAA.

All valid points but those ship bits that are just “okay” according to you are the best thing to happen to gaming since sliced bread! I haven’t played an AssCreed game since the 2nd one so I wasn’t burned out on it. And yes, it can get repetitive, and yes it’s ridiculously easy, and yes there was very little sense of discovery, but for me all that melted away and did not matter when I was at the helm of my Jackdaw. The ship falling and rising with the waves as the sun is rising over the horizon; the storms that would appear out of nowhere as if made by the hand of the creator, threatening to tear my ship apart; chasing down schooners and brigs at first, but then upgrading my cannons and ram, and taking on Frigates and Man-Of-Wars; facing the walls of forts and taking them down as my cannons and mortars roared; hearing my men howl for blood as we board yet another ship that thought it could best us and then hearing them cheer as I throw down its last scout or drive my sword in the back of its captain.

I’m romanticizing somewhat of course, but damn if that wasn’t the best pirate experience I’ve ever had in a game, or anywhere for that matter.

After finishing the game I re-watched all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies because I was jonesing for more pirates.

I think the bottom line here is that it’s a game that rewards role-playing, and it becomes tedious fairly quickly if you’re not willing to bring that to the game.

I should have been a hard sell for this game because I grew up in South Florida, I’ve traveled all over the Caribbean and Central America, and I’ve been a sailor most of my life. The way sailing and naval combat is represented in the game is just too silly for words. But when I put on my “Captain Blood” persona and just go with the flow, it managed to grab me. It’s a big pirate theme park and I’m having fun with it.

I’m completely burnt on the AC experience. It’s never lived up to it’s potential. The high point, AC 2 and Brotherhood, were so because they took a large step forward in the mechanics, while also having the best writing of the series and an excellent protagonist.

But it’s all worn very very thin by this point. I found the AC3’s American Revolution/frontier setting more interesting than Black Flag’s pirating. Too bad the actual game experience was so silly and poorly written. As pretty as the ship bits can be in both games, the lack of any sort of challenge or complexity leaves it feeling arcadey and empty. It looks undeniably cool, but if I let my mind turn on for even a moment I start thinking how dumb, shallow and actually boring to play it is.

I found AC1’s writing vastly superior to AC2’s. In AC you had actual moral relativism and the templars had their plausible reasons for doing what they did, while in AC2 it was all about revenge and templars kicking puppies.

Of course, gameplay-wise it was utterly reversed. AC1 is not very playable, while AC2 was tons of fun.

I already played through the whole thing in a day and a half (as part of AC4’s special edition or whatever it’s called). It’s quite short, actually. But it’s great fun interrupting slave auctions by hanging the auctioneer with a rope dart from a tree.

I read a lot of comments about finishing the game in 2 days and I always just think, Wow, I play games a lot differently than these people. I mean, obviously it’s possible to play the entire story in a couple days, so there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but from my perspective I can’t think of a reason why I’d want to power through it all like that. Especially with this game, as there is some story and character stuff in the side missions as well, and the voyage is half the fun. I doubt the ending sequences would have had as much of an emotional impact on me as they did if I had plowed through the story in 16 hours. I can’t even imagine how you had time to hang slave auctioneers, but this was my first Assassin’s Creed game, so I spent my first day just getting the hang of the controls.

The problem with all the sidequests in AC games is they seem tantalizing at first and I almost convince myself I might try and 100% it, but then it keeps expanding, other games I’m interested in come out and the spell breaks. They really need to do something new with the formula for the next game, but I’m not sure they will. The thing is I still enjoy them all, but Revelations and 3 really broke the magic. I never want to have to tail/eavesdrop on someone ever again.